Evaluating Your Needs - Step 1

The Role Of Communication In Today's Modern Business

Your Step-By-Step Guide To Building A Successful Communication Platform

Communicating Successfully

Today’s most successful companies and organizations do one thing very well. They communicate. Whether it’s people connecting with people, people connecting with machines or machines connecting with other machines, every
process is seamless, which makes operations efficient, productive and safe.

Effective communications are an essential building block for success. But how do you know whether your communications platform is optimized for your business? And if there’s room for improvement, what steps can you take to get things working more smoothly?

In the following pages, we discuss the importance of building the right communications platform. One that supports your objectives and helps you achieve your goals. We lead you through the criteria you need to consider in evaluating your business, so you can define where you are and where you want to be. Then we map out a path to evolve your platform, highlighting in each chapter a different communication technology that’s relevant to your business and supportive in achieving the overall business strategy.

Ultimately, communications should be seamless and responsive, ready to react to the daily challenges of running a
commercial enterprise. One of the most important steps when building the right platform is choosing devices that are designed with the build quality and features required for the tasks at hand. Motorola Solutions is ready to help you evaluate and evolve your communications platform, so you can achieve optimum efficiency, productivity and safety across your business.

Achieve Your Business Objectives Through Effective Communications

Every business faces pressures and challenges, more so today than ever. Whether you’re running a manufacturing plant, transport company, hotel, hospital or school, you’ll know how tough it is to achieve business objectives in an uncertain world where conditions can change at a moment’s notice.

So how can you streamline your operation to make sure you’re ready to react when spikes in demand or cuts in funding put business activity under strain? In this section, we look at the challenges you face and review how optimizing communication systems can help support business goals. We invite you to take an honest look at your communications to identify any areas where it may be holding you back. Then we suggest steps which you could take to put things right so expenditure is managed, profit is optimized, and your customers, employees, and stakeholders stay happy.

Efficiency, Productivity & Safety – The Three Pillars Of Success
Achieving business objectives is reliant on maximizing efficiency, productivity, and safety. Get these right and operations proceed seamlessly, people and assets work to their optimum, and everyone and everything stays protected.

Efficiency
Improving efficiency can generate savings across the business even when costs are rising. One great way to do this is for individuals and teams to work as one, with clear goals – everyone has a defined role, there’s no duplication of effort or communication breakdowns.

Productivity
Being productive means you can react rapidly to unexpected interruptions, minimizing impact and reducing downtime so deadlines and targets stay on track. Giving people the tools they need to be productive is a positive step that creates a sense of ownership and pride in a workforce.

Safety
Underpinning your business are your resources. Are you ready to respond in the moment to an injured worker, security breach or fire – before an incident becomes a crisis? Maintaining safety and security to meet legal regulations is also mandatory business practice that helps you avoid legal action, crippling fines or worse.

Communications can help bring these three key pillars together. Having an effective communications platform creates a working environment that is focused on achieving business objectives. But what makes a communications platform effective? And what do you need to consider to ensure your systems are fit for purpose?

Evaluating Your Communications
Just like business, communication faces its own challenges. For example, how to be effective across known coverage black spots, areas of high noise, hazardous environments, or places where different teams are using different devices. These challenges can be overcome with the right setup. The key is to step back and evaluate where you are and where you want to be. This should include some considerations that will define how your communications network will evolve as business requirements change.

Define Where You Are
Has your organization grown rapidly since your last communication review? More staff, bigger premises, new systems and networks? If so, you’ve probably outgrown your platform and may even have spotted the danger signs – unreliable communications across your facilities, inability to access certain data services, lack of capacity. These shortfalls impact on your efficiency, productivity and safety.

Evolving Your Communications

Think about your needs. Here are some pointers that may help you decide how to progress. Once you have considered where you want to be, look at the features and functions that will get you there. These may include:

Cost
As well as fixing your budget, consider how important predictability is – some solutions come with uncontrollable costs, such as mobile phones where monthly usage fluctuates.

Summary

Never Underestimate The Importance Of Communications
Every business or public-sector service is different with its own set of challenges and pressures. Objectives may be unique but there is a common denominator – every organization is underpinned by efficiency, productivity and safety. These three criteria also underpin the core values of a reliable communications network.

Understanding that communications are critical is an essential first step, but how do you move on to find precisely the right solution for your needs? Especially as there’s no one device that will suit all. In the next chapter, we look at the different two-way radio solutions you could consider to help create the ideal communications network for your business.

Three Things To Consider

Is your business being held back because workers can’t reach the people who matter when it matters?

Does your incident response plan include reliable and effective communications?

Are your staff focused on the most immediate, income-generating or target-hitting tasks in an efficient way?